What's A Heaven For?

June 17, 1986|By white

As the lander gently settles, a rover pulls up to ferry the new crew to base camp, where they will live and work for four years. Far above the galactic settlers, the spaceship that has brought them here refuels for the return journey to Earth.

The year is 2035. The place: Mars.

Far-fetched? Well, yes and no.

Certainly it strains the imagination to believe that within 50 years Americans might live and work on a planet that never comes closer than 35 million miles to their own. But the difficulty of making such an imaginative leap also says something about what NASA and this nation have lost since they dared to reach for another heavenly body -- the moon -- and won.

NASA's vision had collapsed long before Challenger's flawed O rings exposed tragic flaws in the space agency's management. The infrastructure that was to have become a means to an end -- the shuttles and the space station that was to be the launching pad into deep space -- had become too much the end in itself.

Beset by budget wars and too many demands that it pay as it went, NASA had stopped reaching, and the nation behind it had shortened its grasp in turn. Instead of a clear policy for the future -- one that answers the question, What's a heaven for? -- NASA offered frenzied activity.

Nor is the present space program to be confused with the Apollo program that began in 1961 when John F. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the moon before the end of that decade. Apollo's single-minded pursuit of a national goal paid incredible dividends. The present groveling before a host of constituencies pays scant dividends on a plunging stock.

As fond as he is of borrowing from the gestures of past presidents, Ronald Reagan should appropriate Mr. Kennedy's as a first step toward reinvigorating NASA, giving it the direction it needs and, most important, reinspiring the nation to think grand thoughts. Like the earlier goal, this one should stretch imagination near its limits: a manned mission to Mars.

Why should this nation dedicate its resources to interplanetary travel?

-- It creates new technology and enterprises.

That's perhaps the most practical reason, one noted by the National Commission on Space in its endorsement of a Mars mission. NASA's earlier space efforts brought dramatic improvements in weather forecasting, communication, computers and archeological exploration.

-- It would unlock the vast resources in the moon, Mars and even asteroids. Someone will establish those celestial mining outposts, and the unavoidable fact is that the Soviets are now far ahead.

But deep space doesn't have to become yet another battleground for the superpowers. Unlike the Apollo program, a Mars mission could take on the flavor of a worldwide interplanetary expedition.

Indeed, Sens. Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii and John Glenn of Ohio have proposed that 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World, be declared the International Space Year and that many of its activities be directed toward sending a joint U.S.-Soviet manned mission to Mars. Such an effort could draw on Soviet experience with prolonged space travel and the successes of other nations' emerging space industries.

The space commission estimates that, with international cooperation, a Mars program could be funded with a percentage of the gross national product equal to half that spent at the height of Apollo.

-- Space exploration can stretch the human mind.

Officials at NASA can fix what's wrong with the shuttle; they can go on to the immediate goal of placing a space station above the Earth. But without a bigger dream, they cannot take the public's imagination with them into the upper strata of human potential.

Nothing less than a commitment to go to Mars can restore the spirit of Apollo. And what awaits after astronauts step onto that planet? Some scientists believe that interstellar flights, perhaps fueled with energy taken from Jupiter, might be possible by the end of the 21st century.

The glory of deep space is that its challenges are inexhaustible. Those challenges should be irresistible as well.